OCDSB approves French immersion and English in most schools

Starting in September 2026, all but a handful of schools in the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board will offer both English and French immersion streams, and the board will begin slowly phasing out its alternative program.

The English public board will also retire a long-standing program that allowed students to start French immersion in Grade 4, known as middle French immersion. Instead, all children leaving bilingual kindergarten will soon be allowed to take the English program or choose to start French immersion at the beginning of either Grade 1, Grade 2 or Grade 3.

Director of Education Pino Buffone said streamlining four elementary school programs down to two was necessary, and a project the board has known it needed to tackle for more than a decade. The board wanted to resolve inequities by providing the same programs in all schools — and market itself as one of the only boards to offer French immersion so widely — but the organization was also spread thin, he said.

• What you need to know ahead of the OCDSB's final vote on its elementary review

"In essence, for every additional program that we offer, there are inefficiencies that are created from staffing through to transportation," Buffone told trustees at a meeting Tuesday night.

Trustees approved this overhaul of elementary programs in a final 9 to 3 vote.

It was the culmination of earlier debates and reports that began in April 2024 — and many of the most controversial proposals had been walked back in recent months.

• OCDSB proposes to scale back elementary school overhaul
• Trustees vote to keep OCDSB's special needs programs intact

For instance, board staff had to rework maps of school catchment areas after thousands of parents wrote in and held protests in March. Then, more than three dozen special classes for children with complex needs were also maintained after families said their children would not be well supported in mainstream classrooms.

Attempt to study alternative schools

As the many rounds of reports and consultations led to changes, worries eased for many families.

By the final board meeting, it was mainly those who held out hope of saving the alternative program who watched the final vote from the public gallery at the board office on Greenbank Road. Wearing purple T-shirts, they knew their own children would be able to complete the program over the coming years, but wanted future children to have the option. 

They had a champion in trustee Amanda Presley, who experienced the alternative program herself and has a child currently enrolled. Presley tried to amend the recommendations and get staff to produce a report by fall of 2027.

"It does not entrench the alternative program forever, but it keeps the door open long enough for us to rigorously evaluate, consult, and design a future with all the facts and voices at the table," Presley pitched.

"Don't throw away a good thing," agreed trustee Justine Bell, who asked colleagues to show the community they had heard the many stories of how children's lives were changed by a program that offers a different way of learning. Bell added her own story, saying that finding community in an alternative program changed her life when she was a struggling 14-year-old.

The majority of trustees didn't agree to debate sending staff away to produce the report, however.

Even Suzanne Nash, whose zone has three of the five alternative schools, said many of the tenets of the alternative program can now be found in all schools. Rather than showcase innovative forms of learning, alternative schools often serve children with needs that haven't been met in the mainstream system, and it takes a toll on educators, Nash said.

"The alternative model, what was envisioned back in the 1980s, is not what is we see today," she said.

For his part, Buffone laid out that staff had already done multiple studies over many years.

Those have shown that students in the alternative program are chronically absent and don't earn the same number of high school credits as their peers after leaving the program, he said. Meanwhile, teachers have under-capacity classrooms and the board pays $1.2 million per year to transport students to the five alternative schools, he said.

English-only schools

In addition to Presley, trustees Nili Kaplan-Myrth and Lyra Evans voted against the elementary program review. 

Evans says in a city like Ottawa, French is in demand and lauded the board for being willing to dual track almost all schools. 

But both Evans and Kaplan-Myrth maintain that the board is failing students by leaving just five elementary schools English-only. Four of those are located in areas where families have lower incomes or are new Canadians. 

"To have gotten 95 per cent of the way there and said, 'We're going to not provide French education in certain schools, and the schools that we have picked are ones in low-income neighbourhoods,' really misses the equity mark in my eyes," Evans told other trustees.

Kaplan-Myrth worried those schools will be slated for closure should the Ontario government lift its moratorium on closures and mergers.

Buffone said staff aimed to dual track every school but knew it might fall slightly short. On the whole, however, he said he was pleased with the vote because the board could now move ahead. 

It comes during a month when PriceWaterhouseCoopers has been assigned by the Ontario government to investigate the OCDSB's finances and look into why it has been posting deficits for four years.

• Ministry of Education launches investigation into OCDSB finances
• Ottawa's biggest school board needs to avoid a fifth straight deficit

"This decision will signal to our financial investigators that the board is looking at ongoing structural deficits," Buffone told CBC News.

The following trustees voted in favour of the elementary program review: Suzanne Nash, Cathryne Milburn, Donna Dickson, Matthew Lee, Julia Fortey, Jennifer Jennekens, Justine Bell, Donna Blackburn and Lynn Scott.

Trustees Nili Kaplan-Myrth, Amanda Presley and Lyra Evans voted against.